


The Metal From the Stars

by David Hines (hradzka)



Category: John Bellairs - Lewis Barnavelt series
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Curtana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hradzka/pseuds/David%20Hines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As they grow into young adulthood, Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger face another supernatural mystery -- and, even more frightening, the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Metal From the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Curtana as part of Yuletide 2008. Thanks to HLWH and Jade Lennox for splendid betas. Thanks also to the late John Bellairs, and to Curtana for requesting this fandom. I hadn't read the books in years, and it was great to rediscover them.

On a cold winter day in 1957, Lewis Barnavelt was happily sprawled across his uncle's sofa, a bowl of popcorn in his lap and a baseball game on the television. The television was black-and-white, of course, but Lewis's Uncle Jonathan, who was a wizard, had worked some magic on it that made baseball games come through in color. Jonathan wasn't a very good wizard, though, so the teams were wearing the wrong colors as often as not, and once the Yankees' pinstripes had mysteriously changed to polka dots.

The television also picked up strange channels from time to time. Lewis thought this must be one of those times. The people in the stands were dressed strangely, and Lewis never had to wait for the score because a little border on the screen showed him what it was and which bases were loaded. Also, it wasn't baseball season.

Lewis usually watched baseball games with Jonathan. But tonight the Capharnaum County Magicians Society was having a meeting, and so Jonathan, grumbling all the while, had dragged his robes out of mothballs. The meeting was out on a farm near the edge of the county, where the magicians could do all manner of spells without bothering any of the neighbors. The most Jonathan would say was that after a few hours of drinking cider and card playing, the magicians were known to go outside and show off.

Lewis wished he could be there to see it. Jonathan was a wonderful illusionist. Even better, their next-door neighbor Mrs. Zimmermann had gone with him -- or, since they had taken her car, he had gone with her. Mrs. Zimmermann was a witch, and although she was several years older than Jonathan they were best friends. But Jonathan did mostly parlor tricks, while Mrs. Zimmermann could do real and powerful magic. Lewis couldn't even imagine what kind of spell she would invent for the occasion.

Lewis didn't mind being home alone, though. It was an eerie sort of peaceful in the old house after dark. The clocks, fewer of them than when Lewis had come to live with Uncle Jonathan so many years ago, ticked gently to themselves, and every so often the house would creak. The sounds had scared him, years before, but now he'd come to know them as friendly. The only sounds he didn't like were the tree branches against the windows. The wind in the garden sent the trees rapping, tapping, gently but insistently. Sometimes Lewis felt that if he turned, he would see a long-nailed finger beckoning to him, and a horrible face pressed against the glass.

He half-turned to the window at the next rap, and a pale face pressed against the glass said, "_Lewis_."

Lewis jumped. His heart leapt into his throat, and he nearly spilled the popcorn. Then he saw who it was. "Rose Rita!" he said. "You nearly scared me to death!"

The figure outside laughed as Lewis opened the window. Cold air and a few snowflakes blew inside as Rose Rita Pottinger, Lewis's best friend, climbed in. She was a year older than Lewis, but they'd been in the same grades at school, and they'd been best friends for almost as long as Lewis had lived with Jonathan. She'd been a tomboy back then, and she still dressed like a boy as often as she could get away with it; she was tall and skinny, as she'd always been, with stringy hair and glasses. Lewis had changed a little more; he'd been a short, fat, nervous bookworm, and at nineteen he was a tall, husky, less nervous bookworm. Looking back, his efforts to be more of what a boy was supposed to be had all been made so he could keep up with his best friend, the girl who was better at being a boy than Lewis would ever be.

Rose Rita glanced at the television. "Is everybody's uniform right this time?" she said. She was grinning. Rose Rita loved Jonathan's spells when they went right, but she also loved to tease him about the ones that went wrong. She knew that Lewis and Jonathan were as puzzled about why the television picked up strange channels as they were about why the player organ sometimes left off what it was supposed to be playing and wandered into advertising jingles.

Lewis laughed. "I don't know. It's one of those weird games."

"As long as the Christmas ornaments are working," Rose Rita said. "Aggie still doesn't believe me that they show scenes on other planets." Aggie was Rose Rita's friend. She lived on a farm in the upper part of Michigan's lower peninsula. The two girls had met years before when Rose Rita had gone on a trip with Mrs. Zimmermann.

"You talked to her? She's still coming, isn't she?"

"She gets in tomorrow evening. She still thinks I'm making things up about Christmas at your uncle's house. 'Other planets, Rose Rita? Oh, quit telling stories!'"

The truth was that Rose Rita was fond of telling stories, and was known to embroider the truth to make it more interesting. Lewis would have made a joke about that, but Rose Rita's mention of other planets made him realize there was something he had to do. "Hey!" said Lewis. "I almost forgot to do the star chart for Uncle Jonathan!"

"Star chart?" said Rose Rita. "Doesn't he have an almanac?"

"Sure he does. But he says reading the stars is important if you're going to be a wizard."

"You?" said Rose Rita. She looked surprised. "You really want to --"

"Sure," said Lewis. "Don't you?"

"_No_," said Rose Rita with feeling. "And I can't believe you do, after some of the things you've done. You told me what happened when you took Tarby to the cemetery -- "

"I don't want to do serious magic," said Lewis. "I wouldn't mind being able to make illusions like Uncle Jonathan does, though."

"I'll say 'I told you so,'" said Rose Rita.

They climbed the stairs to the third floor and looked out the little window that sat in the tower like an eye. Lewis had star books, a telescope, and his charts already spread out. He'd been doing star charts for a little while now, and didn't need the books much any more. He knew the stars well enough. The magic was giving him trouble, though, and he was starting to fret. If even reading the stars was so difficult, maybe illusions would be beyond him.

Rose Rita lay down on her back and looked up at the sky while Lewis worked. She lay with her head toward the window, so she saw things upside down.

"What are you going to do next year?" said Rose Rita after a while.

"I don't know," said Lewis. "College, I suppose. Or work another year." He liked his job at the library in town, even if he didn't want to do it forever. "Uncle Jonathan says I should get some college education, though." He hesitated, because he and Rose Rita hadn't talked about the future much before. They'd always avoided it, and Lewis was a little nervous about the subject. "What about you?"

Rose Rita made a face. "My mother wants me to learn just enough to be useful to a husband," she said. "I don't want that, though. I want to go places and do things. I want to go to Africa and shoot a leopard -- for real, not just in an illusion -- and go to Holyrood Castle and see where Rizzio's blood stains the floor, like in the John Stoddard essay you told me about. I want to see bullfights and glaciers and volcanoes, and I want to smoke cigars like Mrs. Zimmermann. Doesn't that sound like a better life than boring old New Zebedee?"

It didn't to Lewis, not particularly. He wasn't a chubby, frightened child any more, but he'd learned that what he really liked was being at home, with his books and the people and things he'd grown to love around him. Lewis loved to read about people having adventures. He'd even had some of his own. But for his money the best part of an adventure was that you got to come home afterwards, and that didn't work unless you had a place to come home to. And for Lewis, that home would always be the house Jonathan called Barnavelt's Folly. He realized now that he'd thought Rose Rita would always be around to be part of it.

Rose Rita sat bolt upright. "Crud!" she said. "I told my mother I'd look in on Mrs. Simmons -- she slipped on the sidewalk, and Ma said as long as I was going out I should ask how her knee was doing. I have to go."

They said their goodbyes and Rose Rita dashed off down the stairs. Lewis stayed by the window watching the stars and thinking about what Rose Rita had said. He couldn't see himself roaming all around the world with Rose Rita, but he couldn't see New Zebedee without her, either. The thought made him a little sad, so he worked on the charts longer than he needed to, redrawing stars, scribbling more and more detailed notes until his eyes grew heavy and he fell asleep where he lay.

Lewis woke to hear the clock chiming two. Uncle Jonathan hadn't come home, but Lewis had expected that; Jonathan had said he might not be back until morning, and Lewis shouldn't count on him for breakfast. The cold was seeping through the window, and Lewis shivered as he packed up his books and star charts.

As he worked, an odd thing happened. The light seemed to grow and flicker, as if there were a candle outside the window. At first Lewis thought it might be one of Jonathan's magic toys, but when he turned to look he was surprised. A brilliant ball of fire shot overhead. It was close enough that Lewis could see it rolling and tumbling as it fell. Small bits of fire fell away from it as it came down. Strangely, there wasn't any sound; it tumbled down in flames and came to rest in the woods that Lewis knew were less than a mile away.

Lewis stared, his mouth agape. Then he leapt to his feet and ran for Uncle Jonathan's car.

He drove as fast as he felt was safe, and when he arrived he ran eagerly to see if he could find the fallen meteor. But he was disappointed: he stumbled around in the dark, as deep in the woods as he dared, but didn't see anything. His flashlight flickered. The batteries were getting low. Lewis turned around to leave. Then he caught a strange scent. It smelled a little like a lightning strike and a little like a bonfire. Lewis followed it to a small hollow in the middle of a stand of trees, and saw part of the thing that had fallen from the stars.

It was still warm to the touch. But it wasn't rock. It was metal -- not ore, either, but metal that had been worked and shaped. It was a coil almost as long as Lewis's forearm, not of a tube but of solid metal half an inch thick, with a strange blue coating to it. At the top of the coil was a thin flap of metal. It looked as if the coil had been torn away from something.

Lewis knew -- everybody knew -- that the Russians had put satellites into orbit. The coat rack in the front hall, which usually showed Mayan temples or jungle scenes in its mirror, had somehow picked up Sputnik 1's beeping for a solid week until Jonathan had threatened to hack it into kindling. Lewis hadn't heard that any of the satellites were falling down. But now one had, and he had a piece of it! A real Sputnik! in New Zebedee!

He didn't know where the rest of it was, and didn't want to risk losing the flashlight. But as he left the woods, Lewis used his old Boy Scout pocket knife to make clumsy blazes on the trees so he could find the site again. He cradled the Sputnik fragment to his chest. It wasn't science fiction like the magazines he sometimes read. It was a little lump of metal that had been up in the stars and it was real. Lewis set it on his dresser that night, and went to sleep, dreaming of falling through the sky.

* * *

Lewis woke up at a little past four in the morning. He grumbled and pulled the blankets up around himself, then turned over to go back to sleep before he realized why he'd awakened. Someone was in his room.

"Uncle Jonathan?" Lewis said. He was dimly aware of a shape in the darkness, by the fireplace at the other end of the room. "I thought you said -- " He blinked, swiped a hand in front of his face; and then he sat bolt upright in terror, because the shape in the darkness was not Jonathan. Its shape was strange and irregular, and it wavered, like a reflection on water; it was shorter than a man, and wide, and _it was coming closer_.

On the nightstand next to Lewis's bed was a copy of a simple magic book that Jonathan had given him permission to read. It was called "The Long Lost Friend," and Lewis, who had been an altar boy, liked it because along with the magic spells the book contained many useful prayers. Mrs. Zimmermann said that the book itself was a sort of amulet. But Lewis would have known that even if she hadn't told him, because it was written inside the cover: "Whoever carries this book with him, is safe from all his enemies, visible or invisible; and whoever has this book with him cannot die without the holy corpse of Jesus Christ, nor drowned in any water, nor burn up in any fire, nor can any unjust sentence be passed upon him. So help me." Then the book had three crosses, which Mrs. Zimmermann had said meant that the reader should make the sign of the cross three times. So Lewis did.

He grasped the book and held it to his chest. _Please work_, he thought. _Please work, please protect me._ He shut his eyes tight and tried to think of a protective spell -- Jonathan had taught him one or two -- but the only thing he said was, "Go away, go away, please go away!"

Nothing happened at first. The shadowy form stepped closer and closer. Then it stopped before it reached the bed, and rippled away into nothingness.

Lewis sat up for the rest of the night. The strange apparition never came back. There were no strange sights or sounds, no mysteries, no horrors in the dark, and by dawn Lewis was wondering if he'd really seen something or if he'd just had an exceptionally vivid dream.

* * *

Uncle Jonathan wasn't home by nine o'clock, so Lewis made breakfast for one and made his way downtown, where Rose Rita kept the books for her father's store. It wasn't a long trip, so Lewis walked. He held the coil from space under one arm.

Lewis had spent the hours between four and dawn sweating with fear, but he'd spent the hours between dawn and breakfast thinking, and actually eating breakfast had had a greatly calming effect. Lewis was a great admirer of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and given a difficult problem he often tried to address it as the great detective would. On his walk, he thought about what Holmes would conclude about the mystery.

Holmes, Lewis decided, would realize there were two possibilities: 1) Lewis had dreamed everything or 2) the apparition was real. If 1) was correct, Lewis had nothing to worry about. If the apparition was real, however, then Lewis had to consider its origin, and that part was easy. 1) A Russian satellite had fallen last night, and Lewis had found part of it; 2) the mysterious apparition had appeared in Lewis's bedroom, where Lewis had put the piece of satellite; 3) it was only logical to suspect that these highly improbable events were connected; therefore, Lewis-as-Holmes concluded, the piece of satellite was magical, and had some strange effect associated with it.

Was that the secret of the Russian space program? Did the Soviet Union use wizards and witches to build their rockets? Lewis didn't know anything about Russian magic. Jonathan probably wouldn't, either, but Mrs. Zimmermann might.

In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to be careful. Lewis remembered the news accounts of the previous year, when the Soviets had sent troops into Hungary. He didn't know what kind of spells the Communists would use to protect their satellites, but he suspected they wouldn't be very nice ones. He glanced down at the coil nervously. As far as he could tell, it hadn't done a thing.

Lewis was so busy looking at the coil with occasional glances up to the road ahead that he didn't see who was on the street corner until he bumped into him. Lewis looked up to apologize, and felt his blood run cold: it was Woody Mingo.

Woody had tormented Lewis mercilessly when they were younger. Some of the boys who had teased Lewis had grown up well enough, though Lewis didn't understand why they seemed to expect him to be happy to see them when their paths crossed in town. But Woody Mingo had gotten worse. He'd left school, and the last Lewis had heard he had been sent to prison after breaking both of a man's arms in a bar fight.

"Hey, pissant!" said Woody. "Who do you think you're -- " he looked at Lewis and his face screwed up in confusion, then smoothed out as he placed the face. " -- I'll be! Lard-ass Lewis Barnavelt!"

"Leave me alone, Woody," said Lewis, his voice shaking. He'd said those words so many times. They'd never worked.

"Whatcha got there?" said Woody, looking at the coil. "Part of your crazy uncle's still or something?"

"My uncle's not crazy," said Lewis.

"Got a still, though, huh? Let's see." Woody grabbed at the coil, and before Lewis realized what had happened Woody had snatched it from Lewis's arms. Lewis tried to grab it back. He only caught onto the little metal flap at the end. For a moment they held the coil between them. Then Woody wrenched, and Lewis was left holding the little metal flap, but the coil itself had broken away. Woody hadn't been ready for the piece to break, so he stumbled, and the coil fell through his hands. It rolled down the street and into the gutter, where it fell into the storm drain and landed far below. Lewis watched it disappear.

Woody saw his face and laughed. "Do what you always did, Fatty," said Woody, giving him a rough shove. "Go home and cry."

Lewis wasn't the strongest man, but he had a grown man's strength now. He was taller than Woody, too, and heavier, so when Woody had shoved him he didn't fly back the way he'd always used to. That startled him, and his mind reeled a little in the face of it. All the times Woody had pushed him, all the times Woody had pinched him cruelly in class, all the times Woody had forced him to march downstairs during fire drills (_"Right butt, left butt, hup-two-three-four, MARCH!"_), even the time Woody had stolen his Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat -- all of it was meaningless now, because while Lewis was still overweight and Woody was whippet-lean, Lewis was the larger man. The realization swelled in Lewis, and he saw an instant's flash of surprise in Woody's face at the light growing in Lewis's eyes.

And Lewis, to his own utter surprise, punched Woody Mingo square in the jaw.

* * *

"This," said Rose Rita, "is the last thing I expected to be doing when I woke up this morning. Bailing you out of jail!"

"You didn't bail me out," said Lewis. "They let me go. They just didn't want me to be alone." Because they pitied me, he didn't say.

"They didn't care about Woody?"

"Nobody cares about Woody," said Lewis. "I don't think Woody cares about Woody, and that's just fine with me. He can rot." He wiped his eyes with a shaking hand, and told himself again that he was nineteen, that he would not cry. "They said he was on parole, and he's going back now. After they have the hearing. And when he's back in prison, he'll be getting angrier and angrier, thinking it's all my fault."

"Because you hit him?"

"They think he hit me first."

"I thought you said you hit him first! Didn't you tell them -- "

"Of course I did," Lewis said miserably. "They didn't believe me. Tarby's a policeman now; he knows me and Uncle Jonathan. He thinks I'm lying because I'm scared of Woody. He doesn't believe I'd hit Woody for no good reason."

"I think you had plenty good reason."

"I got Woody sent back to prison, is how he'll look at it. Now he'll come out and he'll be mad at me." Lewis's shoulders slumped.

"Look," said Rose Rita. "Woody will be fine. We'll go back later and explain everything once Woody has a chance to cool down, all right? Maybe this little episode will even teach him a lesson."

Lewis thought that if two years in prison hadn't taught Woody a lesson, then a day or two in New Zebedee's little jailhouse wouldn't do any better. But he didn't say that.

They retraced Lewis's steps to the site of the altercation. Lewis pointed at the sewer. "That's where it fell," he said. He had told Rose Rita the whole story on the way.

Rose Rita got down on her hands and knees. "Ha!" she said, craning her neck to look inside. "That's on the old storm drain line. The outlet's in Wilder Creek Park. I've been in a little way. The tunnel's big enough to walk through." She leapt to her feet, dusted herself off, and grinned at Lewis expectantly.

"What?" said Lewis. "You mean... go down there?"

"It'll be a great adventure," Rose Rita said, her eyes gleaming. "Your uncle always had the most horrible stories about those sewers."

"Don't remind me," said Lewis, shuddering.

Rose Rita grinned fiendishly and dipped her chin toward her chest as she lowered her voice to mimic Jonathan. "'And we turned around the corner, Lewis, and in the dark we saw a shape that looked like a heap of rags, but then it moved and we saw it was a man -- '"

"Stop it!"

"Oh, Lewis! I love that story!"

"I hate it," said Lewis with feeling. "I always hated it. I had nightmares about him and my dad being chased by the hobo with the knife." When Jonathan had first told that story, Lewis hadn't slept for two nights, and he'd skirted uneasily around the storm drains in the road. Rose Rita bit her lip. "What?" said Lewis.

"There wasn't a hobo with a knife," said Rose Rita. "Jonathan fessed up after he saw how scared you were. He told me, but he was afraid you'd never forgive him. They just startled a sewer worker, and he yelled at them."

Lewis blinked. "What?"

Rose Rita shrugged. "You were reading all those things about catacombs," she said. "He just wanted to keep you out of the sewers."

Lewis shook his head to clear it. The news was disorienting, in its way more so than the realization that he was bigger than Woody Mingo. Perhaps, a small hopeful voice whispered deep within him, all his childhood torments were less formidable than his memories had led him to believe. But Lewis knew it wasn't true. When he was a boy, he'd accidentally raised evil spirits more than once, and everything he'd learned about magic since had taught him that, if anything, he'd been in more danger than he'd ever dreamed. Over the years, he'd learned the value of caution. "Well," Lewis said. "He was probably right. Maybe we should wait for Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann to come back before we go down there. The sewers aren't safe -- "

"They're perfectly _safe_," Rose Rita said. "They're just full of filth and rats."

"Oh," said Lewis weakly.

Rose Rita beamed. "So what're we waiting for?"

* * *

The tunnels were dark, and Rose Rita led the way with the flashlight. Lewis was a step or two behind, and moved more slowly. After the third time she'd looked behind to see him lagging, Rose Rita let out a sigh of exasperation and grabbed Lewis's hand to tug him along.

Lewis hadn't held hands with Rose Rita any other way. He'd always been a step or two behind, with her pulling him toward someplace he didn't want to go. He didn't know what it would be like to hold her hand walking down the street, or in the movie theater. But now it was comforting. Rose Rita's hand was cold, but her fingers were strong, and Lewis could feel the callus where she held her pencil. Though he tried, he couldn't imagine how it would feel to hold hands without her tugging him forward. He walked a little faster, just to find out.

When he came up beside her, still holding her hand, Rose Rita glanced at him and smiled. Then she squeezed his hand once, and let it go. Lewis wished she hadn't. At every turn, he was expecting to see the apparition, or a pile of rags that resolved itself into a fearsome hobo who in Lewis's imagination looked less like a tramp than an ogre.

"Thanks, Rose Rita," he said.

Rose Rita stopped. She turned to face him. The flashlight lit her features faintly from below, and reflected in her dark-rimmed glasses. "What for?" she said.

Lewis said, "I wouldn't be down here if it weren't for you."

"You wouldn't be down here if it weren't for Woody," said Rose Rita.

"No," said Lewis. "I know that. But -- I wouldn't have come down, now, if it weren't for you. I was too -- " cowardly, he didn't say, though he knew it was right.

Rose Rita put her hand on his arm. "You don't have to impress me, Lewis," she said.

"I've never tried to impress you," said Lewis. "I just -- try to keep up."

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but he thought Rose Rita blushed. She took a deep breath, nodded once, briskly, and then slid her hand down his arm and took his hand again. "Come on," she said. "Only four more blocks to go." Lewis groaned.

They walked on through the darkness, side by side. They held hands, but didn't speak. Lewis's head was awhirl. What did this mean? If they'd been walking like this above on the sidewalk, people would have thought they were sweethearts. Down here, in the sewer, he didn't know why Rose Rita was holding his hand, or what it meant to her. He'd never imagined that fifteen feet could be so great a distance.

They reached the coil without incident. It lay just where it had fallen. It didn't look any more magical than it had looked that morning, on Lewis's dresser, and Lewis wondered again if he were wrong.

"See?" said Lewis, squatting beside the coil. "Here's where this piece was." He held the little metal flap to where it had broken off. When he took his hand away, the little flap wouldn't come with it. Lewis tugged, then gave up and let go. He reached out his hand for the flashlight, and Rose Rita gave it to him. Lewis shined the light on the junction of the coil and flap. The pieces had come together without a seam or a weld to mark where they had joined, as if they had never been broken at all.

Lewis said, "I'm telling Jonathan," at the same time Rose Rita said, "I'm telling Mrs. Zimmermann."

* * *

"I don't think it's magic," said Mrs. Zimmermann. "If it is, it's nothing I've ever seen. But I could tell better if I could have actually seen it work."

They were all around the large round table in Jonathan's living room. The coil was in the middle of the table, and everyone was looking down at it.

"There's a simple way to find out," said Rose Rita. "Just cut it in two and see what happens when it goes back together again."

After a moment in which everyone else gaped and wondered why they hadn't thought of that first, Jonathan threw back his head and laughed. "By gaw, the girl's right! Florence, fetch the tinsnips!"

"Fetch them yourself, brushface," Mrs. Zimmermann retorted. "You'd know where you might have put them. I wouldn't know which pile of junk to move first."

"Hmph!" said Jonathan. "Are you implying, wrinklebags, that my affairs are in anything less than the highest order?"

"Implying, poop. I'm saying it. You won't find those tinsnips in less than forty minutes, and that's if you know what room of this ramshackle monstrosity they're actually in."

"Vile slander!" bellowed Jonathan. "Lewis!"

Lewis sat bolt upright. "Yes, Uncle Jonathan?"

"Get out your watch. Forty minutes," he said with a contemptuous snort. "Time me, Lewis. FIFTEEN."

Uncle Jonathan stormed out of the room, muttering darkly to himself.

Two and a half hours later, Jonathan came back down the stairs. His hair was disarranged and covered with cobwebs. Another cobweb was in his beard. The paperclip watch chain that ran from one lower pocket of his vest to the other was broken, and the pipe cleaners in the upper pockets were bent and twisted and sticking out in all directions. Lewis, Rose Rita, and Mrs. Zimmermann didn't notice him at first because they had given up on him long ago and had started a game of rummy. Lewis was trying to decide whether he should discard a three or a four when Jonathan dropped the tinsnips into the center of the table. They landed with a thunk.

Mrs. Zimmermann was the first to say something. "More than forty minutes," she said, holding out a hand. "Pay up."

"You said 'if I knew what room of this ramshackle monstrosity they're actually in,'" Jonathan said. "Turns out I didn't."

Mrs. Zimmermann's jaw dropped. "Well, of all the -- "

Rose Rita picked up the tinsnips and snipped the little flap of metal on the edge of the coil in two. "There," she said. "Now look." She held the two pieces up to one another, and the cut sealed itself.

Jonathan, who had tucked his pipe into the corner of his mouth, took it out in astonishment. "Well," he said. "Don't that beat all."

Mrs. Zimmermann picked up the coil and held it again. She pressed her finger and thumb to the site of Rose Rita's cut.

"It feels rougher than before," she said. "Do you think -- oh. It just moved under my hand."

"What does it feel like?" said Jonathan.

"Like little ants," said Mrs. Zimmermann. "Like tiny, tiny ants, all of them climbing over and around each other, locking tight to one another's legs."

"Better be careful, Florence," said Jonathan quietly. "Wouldn't want them to lock on to you."

The thought made Lewis shudder. Mrs. Zimmermann was calm, though. "I think they know the difference," she said. "It's very strange. Now they're disappearing, like they're sinking into the surface. And -- now they're gone." She released the device, then looked at her hand thoughtfully, rubbing her fingertips. "Well," she said. "It's remarkable, but it's definitely not magical. Which means that if anything, it's not cursed -- it's haunted. I'd say it's clear now what your nighttime visitor wants, Lewis."

"He wants this piece," said Rose Rita. "Because the rest of -- of whatever it is -- is broken without it."

"'Whatever it is,' nothing," said Jonathan. "Let's say what we're all thinking. It's a spaceship."

That was what Lewis had been thinking, but he was relieved to hear someone else say it. It meant he wasn't crazy. "You think -- you really think it's an _alien_ ghost, Uncle Jonathan?"

"Why not?" said Jonathan. "If there's life on other worlds, it stands to reason they can be ghosts, too. Poor fellow. Bad enough to be dead, but being dead and on a world that's not your own -- I can't think of a lonelier existence."

"What if he's not friendly?" said Rose Rita. Lewis saw a familiar look in her eyes; her imagination was working overtime. "He could be the first wave of an alien invasion! A horde of little green men, coming down to -- "

"He did go away when asked," said Mrs. Zimmermann. "That's a good sign, I think."

"He's your ghost, Lewis," said Jonathan. "What do you think?"

Lewis said, "I think we should find the rest of the ship."

* * *

They drove back to where Lewis had found the coil. After some searching, he found his blazes on the trees and led the others to the little hollow. "The rest of it fell somewhere that way," he said, waving an arm.

"Should be simple enough," said Jonathan. "Law of contact, innit? I think I can handle this one, Florence."

"Sure," said Mrs. Zimmermann, snapping a match out of the air and lighting a cigar. "Go ahead, Weird Beard. Let me know when you hit the hard stuff."

Jonathan bristled, but held the coil in his cupped hand for a moment while he waved the other hand over it. He murmured words under his breath; Lewis leaned forward to listen, but the incantation was over, and Jonathan lifted the coil and pointed it forward. It turned in his hand, pointing deeper into the forest. "There," he said. "Law of contact."

"Hm!" said Mrs. Zimmermann, sounding pleased. "Not bad."

They trudged through the forest for close to an hour. Finally, the trees thinned, and Lewis saw a wide panorama of Bellairs Lake and, far beyond, the other side. His heart sank: was it across the lake? Would they have to cross the ice? But then the coil in Jonathan's hand dipped, dipped down, pointing at the frozen surface.

"It's in the lake," said Lewis. Dismayed, he looked down at the thick coat of ice on the surface of the water.

"Pah," said Mrs. Zimmermann. "Easy enough to deal with. Stand back, all of you."

"Don't tell me you're going to try some mumbo-jumbo, Frumpy," said Uncle Jonathan. "Couldn't convince you to pull anything at the society meeting. I bet you didn't even have anything prepared."

"As it happens," said Mrs. Zimmermann, "I have something suitable for just this occasion. So stow it, Brush Mush."

Mrs. Zimmermann raised her umbrella over the pond and began to chant quietly. The fingers of her other hand described a pattern in the air. Lewis watched eagerly, but her fingers moved too quickly, and he felt himself getting dizzy, so he looked away, back at the pond. The crystal globe on the handle of Mrs. Zimmermann's umbrella began to glow, and became brighter and brighter. Mrs. Zimmermann chanted for another minute, and then fell silent. Nothing happened.

Lewis stared at the ice harder, as if that would change things, but the ice stayed there, stubborn and resolute. Lewis's heart sank. They would never get to the ship now. He didn't know how to make the ghost go away, and his heart quailed at the prospect of a ghost, however lonely, turning up night after night, perhaps bringing ever more terrible visions of an alien world.

Then the ice began to move. Lewis didn't understand what he was seeing at first, and then realized he wasn't staring at ice anymore but at a thick mist that covered the surface of the pond. It stirred slowly in the breeze, but didn't flow away. Lewis blinked, then turned to Mrs. Zimmermann. She seemed pleased.

"Well?" said Mrs. Zimmermann, her umbrella glowing brightly. "What're you all waiting for?" She marched forward into the mist and disappeared underneath the surface.

Lewis and Rose Rita glanced at each other, and then ran after her. Jonathan tucked his pipe into the corner of his mouth and followed.

As he walked through the mist, Lewis felt a cool breeze. Then it was gone, and he was wading deeper and deeper, but there wasn't any water. The ice, turned to mist, was swirling overhead like thick clouds, while the water below had turned to air. The fish didn't seem to have noticed. Lewis saw them swimming by overhead. A perch darted past Lewis's face, and he glimpsed a hibernating turtle nestled beneath an old log. Farther ahead, he saw something that didn't belong at the bottom of the lake. Rose Rita had gone ahead of the group, and Lewis hurried to catch up.

"I'm telling you, it's a spotted turtle," said Jonathan behind him.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Mrs. Zimmermann. "It's a Blanding's. Look at the shell."

"I am looking, and that's why -- "

"Blanding's have yellow speckles," said Mrs. Zimmermann.

"No, they don't. That's the spotted turtle."

"Do you know anything at all about turtles?"

"Now, you listen to me, frumpy --"

Lewis ignored them and pressed ahead. He fell into step beside Rose Rita, and together they made their way to the little pile of wreckage. Lewis couldn't make sense of it at first, because it was twisted and broken; it looked as if it had tried to fix itself and given up halfway. There was a shape inside the cockpit, and it looked only a little like a man.

Lewis rested his hand on the cockpit, but didn't open it. He knelt down beside the wreckage and looked for a spot where his piece of the ship would fit. Rose Rita reached down and brushed part of the sagging wing back, revealing a hollow. She glanced at Lewis. Together, they fitted the coil into place.

There was no sound, no light, no sign of any kind. But as Lewis watched, the twisted metal began to flow, like a candle melting in reverse. Slowly, slowly, the small wings unfolded, the dents undented. Then the little craft rose silently from the lake bed. It turned around once, slowly, and then lifted straight up through the mist at the top of the lake and out of sight. Lewis straightened up as he watched it rise. He was conscious of two sensations: the cold muck of the pond bottom on his knees soaking through his pants, and the feeling of Rose Rita's cold fingers around his own.

"Hunh," said Jonathan as he came up to them. "Well, that's that, I guess. Your ghost must have been a brave fellow, Lewis. I'm glad he's going home, but it's a pity that he crashed. Wonder what his friends back home would have thought of Christmas."

"Maybe the ship can tell them," said Rose Rita. "Maybe they'll come back next year! Maybe they'll invade the planet! Maybe -- "

"Maybe we can bake some cookies before Aggie shows up if we hurry home," said Mrs. Zimmermann. She scraped muck from her boots with the end of her umbrella. "Ugh. This spell works better than I'd thought, but I wish it'd done something about the mud at the bottom."

"Nobody's perfect, Florence," said Jonathan. "Least of all you. Come on, let's head out of here. With our luck, the spell will collapse and drown us all."

Mrs. Zimmermann glared at him. "Maybe if you'd engineered it -- "

"You know," said Rose Rita loudly, "now that we know where we are, it'd be simple enough to go up to the road and walk along that, rather than go through the woods again."

She pointed. Sure enough, there was a path up to the road. And as the road came into view, Lewis saw a taxi parked by the side of the road. Next to it was Rose Rita's friend Aggie, who was waving.

"I saw something flying up out of the lake," said Aggie. "Somehow I knew Rose Rita was involved."

"Involved!" said Rose Rita. "Let me tell you..."

The cab driver drove them all back to Mrs. Zimmermann's car. On the way home, Rose Rita told Aggie how she and Lewis had saved the earth from alien invasion, and she only exaggerated in the best of ways.

* * *

The doorbell rang while Lewis was setting the table. He put down the bundle of silverware and made his way down the long hall to the front door. The sounds of muffled swearing were coming from the kitchen, so he knew Jonathan would be too busy to answer. Lewis expected to see Rose Rita and Aggie, who had stopped by Rose Rita's house to put away Aggie's bags. But when he opened the door his mouth dropped open. The caller, of all people, was Woody Mingo.

Lewis was too surprised to say anything, so Woody spoke first. "They let me out," said Woody. "Said you phoned the station again, wouldn't quit apologizing. Said you said I was messing with you, sure, but you hit me first and after all, it's Christmas. They said I should come here and thank the hell out of you for them not sending me back. Tarby -- Tarby! that little pissant! -- said I should kiss your feet. I'm not gonna do that."

"Good," said Lewis, who was appalled at the mental image that had presented itself.

"But I am gonna thank you. So. Thanks." Woody turned something over in his hands. Lewis realized it was a brown paper bag. "Here you go," said Woody, handing him the bag. Lewis's name was scrawled on it. "Found this in a closet at my Ma's old place. Merry Christmas." He turned to go.

"Woody?" said Lewis, not quite believing the words were leaving his mouth. "Would you like to come in? We're having dinner, and we could -- "

Woody shook his head. "Nah. I got places to go. You enjoy that, ok? I've had it long enough."

Lewis stood with the door open, watching Woody walk down the sidewalk until he disappeared into the dark and the snow. When he closed the door, he stood in the front hall, holding the bag loosely. He reached in cautiously, and felt cloth. When he pulled the gift from the bag, he stared. It was his old Sherlock Holmes hat, the one he'd had years ago before Woody took it from him. Lewis turned it over in his hands. It felt strange to be holding the deerstalker after so long. Overcome with the moment, he tried it on. It didn't fit.

Lewis stared at it for a moment, and then laughed. A hat he couldn't wear that already belonged to him anyway. Perfect for a Christmas gift from Woody Mingo. Lewis hung the deerstalker on the coat rack and went back to the dining room.

Later that evening, while Aggie and Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann were having hot chocolate in front of the tree, Lewis slipped away and found Jonathan in the kitchen. He took a deep breath. "Uncle Jonathan," he said, "should I ask Rose Rita to marry me?"

"Er," said Jonathan. "Is there some reason that she should marry you? Quickly, I mean."

"No," said Lewis, puzzled. "Why?"

Jonathan relaxed and took a puff of his pipe. "Ah," he said, "the innocence of youth. Well, now that my mind is at ease, why don't you tell me the rest of it. Why this sudden interest? I know that you two are great friends, but that doesn't mean you need to get married to her."

"I don't think she wants to stay in New Zebedee," said Lewis. "I thought... I guess I always thought that we'd wind up like you and Mrs. Zimmermann. But she doesn't want that, so -- "

"God!" said Jonathan. "Like me and Florence. That's a dreadful fate. Are you sure you can't think of something better? What is it that you really want?"

"Well," said Lewis, "what I really want is to be like you."

Jonathan lowered his pipe. "I see," he said. "Well." He raised his pipe again and puffed for a few moments. "Lewis," he said slowly, "I think I should be flattered by that, but really it's a little worrying. I've never amounted to much. It's a good thing I inherited a pile of money, because I'd have been a lousy farmer. Frankly, I'm pretty lousy as a magician. So far, about the only thing I don't think I've done too badly at is handling you, and you did most of the work there."

"I don't think I'm in love with Rose Rita," said Lewis. "But I don't know what falling in love is like. And she makes me feel like things will work out some way, even if I don't know what it is yet. I'm not very good at being a man, not the kind of man that movies and books and other men -- most men," he added, with a look at Jonathan, " -- think I'm supposed to be. And she may not be very good at being a girl. But if I have to marry somebody, I'd want to marry her."

"I see," said Jonathan. "Well, you don't have to marry anybody, not if you don't want to. But -- " He lowered his pipe, and looked at the kitchen door. " -- you can tell her all those things for yourself."

Rose Rita, her eyes wide, was standing in the doorway, her hands full of the empty mugs. Jonathan harrumphed and quickly made himself scarce.

"Lewis --" Rose Rita began.

"No," said Lewis. "You don't have to say anything." His cheeks were burning, and he wished he could be some place, any place, but in that kitchen. "I'm not saying I love you -- but I'm not saying I don't -- but you're my friend -- but I -- " His words left him. How could they? Lewis thought. He read so much. How could anyone read so many words and then not have any of his own to say? He felt his jaw tremble, and he looked away from Rose Rita so he wouldn't have to meet her eyes.

Rose Rita put down the mugs in the sink. She stepped over to Lewis in one long stride and took his hands in hers. Her fingers were fresh from the fireside; they felt warm and strong.

"Lewis," said Rose Rita, "if I were going to marry anyone, I think I'd marry you."

"Really?" said Lewis, surprised.

"Really," said Rose Rita. She paused a moment, and then said, "But I'm not."

Lewis nodded. "Oh," he said. "Okay."

He'd never imagined this conversation before, hadn't imagined how it would turn out, so at first Lewis wasn't sure how he felt. It was as if a door had suddenly closed in front of him, leaving what had seemed like the way ahead barred. But he felt, somehow, that other doors were opening, onto new paths of which he knew nothing. He didn't know what they were, only that they were there; they must be, for he was going to have a future and Rose Rita wouldn't be as much a part of it as he had thought she might. He felt a little sad, and strange, and curiously relieved. And he felt a little bit lonely, like an explorer sailing into the unknown.

Aggie laughed when they came out of the kitchen. "What?" said Rose Rita. Aggie pointed, and Lewis looked up to find that he and Rose Rita were underneath the mistletoe. They stared at each other for a moment in bewilderment.

The kiss was awkward and they bumped noses and Lewis was embarrassed that everyone was watching. Afterwards, he blushed bright crimson and looked at the floor. By the time he stopped being embarrassed, Rose Rita had dragged Aggie off on a tour of the house and its various enchantments. Lewis could hear the distant cry of "Dreeb! Dreeb!" from the little man Jonathan had made and called the Fuse Box Dwarf. He turned away from the fire, which had bright blue flames, and looked at the tree, at the ornaments where other planets revolved around distant suns.

"Uncle Jonathan," said Lewis, "do you think any of the ornaments show the planet that the ghost was from?"

"I wouldn't know," said Jonathan. "It's odd, but I don't have the faintest idea of where any of those planets are."

"It wouldn't be hard to figure out," said Lewis. "You could look at the stars, and figure out which ones they were, and then figure out how it looks different from on Earth, and then calculate the position of the planet, and -- "

"Good gravy," said Jonathan. "Lewis, you're talking about things that involve math. Stop it before I get dizzy. Shows what I'm good for. I try to teach a little wizardry, and what do I get? An astronomer."

Lewis smiled. Then he hesitated. "Everything will work out all right," said Lewis. "Won't it?"

"Who's to say what 'all right' is?" said Jonathan. "You needn't worry about it too much, Lewis. The trick is finding yourself somewhere you don't mind being, and figuring that it's all right. I think that's the best trick I've ever pulled, after all."

"I thought the best thing you'd done was me," said Lewis, with a grin.

"Hah," said Jonathan. "You are a terrible rapscallion and remind me far too much of your father when we were young."

"That's good to know," said Lewis. It was.

"Well," said Jonathan. "I'd better go wash those mugs up. Do you want to come? We can have a soapsud war." Jonathan's soapsud wars really were, with flanking attacks and tank brigades and frothy cavalry charges. He and Lewis both enjoyed military history, and sometimes after dinner parties Jonathan would make little bubble men refight Little Round Top on an inverted punch bowl.

"I'll be there in a minute," said Lewis. He was looking out the window.

Jonathan rested a hand on his shoulder briefly, then turned and walked toward the kitchen, whistling a tune from Peer Gynt. Lewis stayed where he was, looking into a future he couldn't see, into the snow that was falling, and into the sky where, far away on another world, a traveller's family waited for his return.

Lewis could never have gotten onto a spaceship heading to another planet. He knew he wasn't brave and never would be. But one thing he'd learned over the years was that it didn't matter much if you were brave or a coward, as long as you kept putting one foot in front of the other and going forward. You wouldn't always wind up where you wanted to go, or where you'd planned to be, but you got somewhere, eventually. And usually that was good enough.

He turned from the window and made his way toward the kitchen and Jonathan's soapsud war. Later they'd roast chestnuts and sing songs and Jonathan would perform his illusion of the Nativity. Everything would be way it had been every year, the way it wouldn't be for very much longer, and perhaps forever, any more. He heard Rose Rita's voice, upstairs, a little distant now, and told himself he'd never forget the sound of it, no matter how far she went, or he did. Even if someday one of them went to another star.

As long as he remembered all of this, no matter where he was, Lewis knew, he'd be home.

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